Power brokers

Every leader needs to find his or her moral compass, and define their own "true north," Reinemund recently told an audience at the University of Texas. He said moral grounding can come from religion or other sources, but it’s imperative that this center be found before one encounters a crisis situation, so that when the world is coming apart, in your business or personal life, you are able to maintain your balance and not come apart with it.

The other principles he adheres to are: Perspective – look for opportunities and create a vision for how you might capitalize on them; Passion – not to be confused with style or charisma, it’s an "inner enthusiasm for what you are doing that is contagious"; Perseverance – handling failure, and the ability to stumble but get back up is a critical trait of any leader; Performance – great leaders consistently achieve great results themselves, and they reward, promote and value performance by others; and People – each employee is important, because one mistake by one associate can be very costly to the company.

A believer in promoting from within, Reinemund launched an executive leadership program. High-performing senior middle managers in key jobs prepare to become the company's future leaders by focusing on personal growth, as well as corporate strategy, ethics, and promoting change and innovation.

Committed to innovation for sustaining growth, Reinemund says, “We take our competitive strengths, and invest in them to create longer-term value. Investing in innovation fuels the building of our brands; this in turn drives top-line growth. Dollars from that top-line growth are strategically reinvested back into new products and other innovation, along with cost savings projects, and thus the cycle continues.”

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Championing whole grains and diversity

Last October, Stephen Sanger again was at the helm of one of the biggest announcements in the food industry. General Mills said it would reformulate all of its Big G cereals to be made from whole grains, a tremendous monetary and marketing commitment. “This improvement by General Mills could signal the most comprehensive improvement in the nation’s food supply since the government began mandatory fortification of grains in the 1940s,” said former FDA Commissioner David Kessler.

Steven Sanger, Chairman/CEO, General Mills

Four years earlier, Sanger was announcing the largest acquisition in food industry history: the $10.1 billion acquisition of Pillsbury from Diageo Plc in 2001. Combining strengths from each entity, reducing debt, maintaining the integrity of brands from both companies and establishing a unified corporate culture was no easy challenge. But insiders say Sanger has achieved his goal of a more relaxed and congenial company atmosphere, fortified by promotions from within. That might explain why General Mills consistently receives kudos as a great place to work, including the championing of Latinas, working mothers, women of color and executive women.

Sanger became chairman/CEO of Minneapolis-based General Mills in mid-1995, and this marketing-savvy leader has added a shopping list of credits to General Mills’ resume. Former president of both the Big G cereal division and Yoplait USA, Sanger certainly can take pride in accolades for General Mills, which garnered Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For and Most Admired Companies awards.

But in the realm of products, Sanger’s focus appears to be on health. Yoplait became the yogurt market leader, surpassing Dannon. Its latest offering is Yoplait Healthy Heart, the first heart healthy yogurt with plant sterols, clinically proven to significantly reduce cholesterol. Plant sterols also will be popping up in Nature Valley Healthy Heart Granola Bars. General Mills has loaned the Wheaties and Total brands to lines of nutritional supplement products made by Leiner Health Products. And after the USDA revealed its new Food Guide Pyramid(s) last month, General Mills was the first major company to jump on board, announcing it would put MyPyramid on all its Big G cereals, meaning more than 100 million boxes would spread the new nutrition message.

It’s no surprise that General Mills was honored by retailers as Manufacturer of the Year for a commitment to understanding its shoppers, trends and demographics, and translating those insights into innovative and actionable merchandising strategies that generate profitable volume growth for retailers.

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Your best and worst customer

Wal-Mart is the “business template” for the modern economy, according to historian Nelson Lichtenstein, a professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara. “In each historical epoch, a prototypical enterprise seems to embody a new and innovative set of economic structures and social relationships,” he says.

H. Lee Scott Jr., President/CEO, Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

Since 2000, H. Lee Scott Jr. has led Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest company (sales of $288 billion) and (by many but not all surveys) most admired retailer. It has more than 1.3 million associates (at Wal-Mart, all employees are called associates) and nearly 5,000 stores and wholesale clubs in 10 countries.